For his contributions to science, technology, and business, Carlson received Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Robert H. Goddard Alumni Award in 2002. For his role in advancing the functional performance and image quality of information displays, he received the Society for Information Display's Otto H. Schade Award in 2006.

Starting in 1973, Carlson participated in research and development in the field of imaging systems, working with the RCA Sarnoff Laboratory.[2] In 1981, Carlson was named the Director of the Image Quality and Perception Research Group and Vice President of the laboratory in 1990. In 1995, Carlson became Executive Vice President of Sarnoff's Interactive Systems Division.[1] He also led the 1997 team that developed the HDTV program that became the US standard, and the 2000 team that designed a system to assess broadcast image quality. Both of these teams were awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for their accomplishments.[1]

He served as the president of SRI International from 1998 to 2014,[2] and oversaw Sarnoff Corporation's full integration into SRI in January 2011.[3][4]

Carlson is known for a term known as "Carlson's Law", coined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to describe Carlson's balance between autocracy and democracy in an organization: "In a world where so many people now have access to education and cheap tools of innovation, innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb."[5][6]